Similar to Salad, Chinese also have seasoned vegetable and meat as cold appetizers served as first dishes. Generally, the cold dishes are divided in to two categories: vegetarian and meat or seafood. Cold dishes are common during summer for appetizing and cooling. A few dishes are easy to cook at home, and many dishes are commonly be ordered or bought for banquet. Depend on different type of vegetables, it can be served as seasoned raw vegetable appetizer or seasoned scalded vegetable appetizer. The cucumber and tomato are the two most common and easiest vegetable cold dishes. The tomatoes are served as slices and sprinkled with sugar. The cucumber can be cut into slices, strips or chunks and then seasoned with salt, sugar, minced garlic, soy sauce, vinegar, sesame oil, and if you like, chili can be added. These are the two typical vegetables that need to be scalded first and then seasoned with salt, soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, sesame oil, and chili. The century egg (mentioned at the breakfast post: century egg and pork congee) and soft tofu can be served separately or as one dish, seasoned with soy sauce, black rice vinegar, and sesame oil. Eating the starch jelly with savory sauce makes you cool and feel comfortable in hot summer. There is another kind of thinner cold noodle seasoned with sliced cucumber, gluten, and bean sprouts, could be a dish on table but more commonly as a street food. The marinated chicken and duck wings and feet are already seasoned during pot stewing and served as cold dish. The mixed animal offals also are pre-marinated, commonly including pig ears, beef shank, and gizzard. The Fuqi Fei Pian also is a famous cold dish. Saliva? You must be curious about the weird name. There are two explanations, one is that the deliciousness makes your mouth water, and another one is that the chili makes your mouth water. Thus, it is a metaphor of its deliciousness. The saliva chicken is short poaching cooked first and cool down in cold water, finally soaked in chili oil. Similarly there is one dish called Slat Brined Duck, cooked duck and served as cold dish, while no additional sauce to eat with since it already been flavored during cooking.
The Jellyfish, while I know many of you haven't heard about it and you may think is that edible? Yes, some jellyfish is edible and can be found at Chinese mart. Even though jellyfish is tasteless, it can be soaked in savory sauce and with its crunchy texture, it is a good choice of cold dish in hot days. If you have chance must try it. Thank you for your reading! See you next time!
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AuthorYuqing Shen Archives
April 2017
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